Boss refuses work from home to an employee. He stopped being available out of office

Editor's note: This article was originally published on February 4, 2023. It has since been updated.

Working from home is still not something that many bosses agree to despite the employees being as productive as they are from the office. On the other hand, employees prefer to work from home because it is more flexible and they can then balance their responsibilities. Not all bosses and their employees are resolving this difference of opinion amicably. One employee shared his experience about wanting to work remotely and what he did when he was refused, on Reddit. The worker is from the IT field and his work was completely remote but he was still asked to come to the office. He wrote, "My job recently told me that even during the snowstorm we got earlier this week, I am not allowed to work from home at all," as reported by Bored Panda.

Because of this, he stopped being available after office hours. "So I deleted Teams and my email off my phone. I am no longer available after hours," he narrated. He shared that once his boss tried to call him for "something urgent" at night and he could not reach him. He wrote, "He asked why today and I explained to him what I was told. I am not allowed to work from home."

The post gained traction on Reddit and has more than 30,000 upvotes. It is captioned, "Not allowed to work from home so I don’t." However, it was deleted later. Many Reddit users could resonate with the employee and they shared their own experiences. u/JoeDeLaGhetto commented, "Ha. I did the same thing. I deleted my company Outlook from my phone. When one of my bosses asked me how is he supposed to get in touch with me, I said just call. But when they call, I let it go right into voicemail. I'll answer the call when I get into the office." u/Forsaken_Crow_7707 wrote, "Told my boss last year 'If you're not accommodating enough to pay me to work from home, then why would I be silly enough to work from home for free?' Haven’t received an after-hours call from her since." u/sugabeetus commented, "My work tried to require me to put my work email on my phone. I said no, but they could get me a work phone and pay me to be on call after hours. I never heard about it after that."

Another employee who was being exploited at work decided to ask for a raise in his wages. To his surprise, he was fired in a few hours. Years later, he found a way to get back at them. He said that "whilst browsing a very old Google Drive account, I found that said company was still using a folder I created and owned. Over 18 people were actively using it daily to continue with their social media campaigns." And the worst part was that this was a cloud service that he was paying for monthly as he wanted extra space for his work, he wrote. 

So, he copied the files for himself and then deleted the online version. He concluded the post by saying, "Tomorrow they will wake up with none of their video assets (including things they were working on)." The Reddit post has gained more than 1,70,000 upvotes and it is captioned, "I just deleted thousands of hours of work from my old job."